He would never have done this at 16. He wouldn’t have appreciated it at 16, though.

It came down in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert because...well, where else would it have come? Anything could happen out here...anything, and no one would believe it if you told them.

The 30th Amendment to the one-time Constitution of the United States, passed in The Age Just Before It All Ended [year indeterminate for obvious reasons], was curious in that it seemed to be inherently contradictory; that is, it seemed to promise citizens both the right to a thing and also a right to its direct opposite.

One thing that many people don’t understand is that questions and answers are different things. Very different.

He always stood up when the bus got full, when the tired women with their heavy bags would get on and there was not a seat free. Sometimes they sat quickly; sometimes they were hesitant to sit where he had been. He wasn’t insulted by that, not anymore.

She was on her face when the sun came up.

“Show me this day the glory that was mine before, that will be mine again! ‘Til my kingdom come!”

The stars were unusually bright that night. The winds that often sweep southern California had blown out all the smog and the heat, and for once it was a chilly clear October night.

From the TV in the house, he heard a voice announcing the two-minute warning.

“I look ridiculous.”

“No, no, you look fine,” Dale lied.

“I look drunk.”

“Well...you do look a little drunk. But you’re fine,” Dale lied again.

The Vassulians are responsible for the shape the world is in today.

That’s not helpful, I know. Obviously there’s more to the story. And the Vassulians would tell you that it’s not their fault, really. But you’re never going to meet them, so they’re never going to tell you anything anyway.

Silvery-chrome letters, ten feet high, hanging on the fiftieth story of the shiny new building. “General Prosthetics & Technology Omnicorp.” He was never sure about the “Omnicorp” part of that, but that was Hendricks, of course; Hendricks was always going on about how much more important it was to ‘tell’ and not just ‘show,’ and so they settled on ‘Omnicorp,’ which always sounded more like hubris than was necessary.

I will tell you what I can remember. I was here for most of it, and my memory is still pretty good, and they’ve been pretty generous about telling me what they know...though they don’t talk much about where they were before, or what they were doing while we were still here.

I said “we,” didn’t I? Yeah, sorry. There’s no “we”...just me. They call me something that sounds like “grandpa,” although maybe that’s my wishful thinking. Their language is so different now than it used to be, it’s kind of hard to tell.

Everybody thought Mrs. Yossarian was crazy. And mostly blind. But mostly crazy.

Not dangerous crazy, just…you know, crazy.

Warren Zevon had me pegged from the start. You know, “I went home with a waitress, the way I always do…”

Waitress, actress, it’s kind of the same out here, on the lower-middle-class fringes of Hollywood. At least, it’s the same for me.